As we work to bring even more value to our audience, we’ve made important changes for those who receive Ad Age with our compliments. As of November 15, 2016 we will no longer be offering full digital access to AdAge.com. However, we will continue to send you our industry-leading print issues focused on providing you with what you need to know to succeed.

If you’d like to continue your unlimited access to AdAge.com, we invite you to become a paid subscriber. Get the news, insights and tools that help you stay on top of what’s next.

"Privacy is one of the biggest impediments to
electronic commerce, right behind security on most surveys," said Ira
Machefsky, VP of Giga Information Group. "I think the eTRUST
initiative is an important one because issues of what happens to
information [online] is of growing concern to individuals."

In fact, a recent study by Boston Consulting Group
shows consumers hold businesses on the Net to a higher standard of
privacy than real-world businesses.

"I think this has to do with the fact that the Internet is
mostly a visual, one-way medium," said Susan Scott, executive
director of TRUSTe. "When you go into a store, you are subconsciously
using all of your senses to determine whether you trust the place
... On the Net, basically a small, one-person business and a
big, well-known company look exactly the same to the
consumer."

TRUSTe would evaluate sites' privacy policies based
on data sites volunteer as well as through personal
interviews with Web sites.

The sites would then be assigned to one of three
categories: "no exchange," where no personal user data is collected;
"1to1 exchange," where the sites collect user data for their own
purposes but do not share them with third parties; and "3rd party
exchange," where sites share the information with others.

"1to1 exchange" sites would be permitted to share user
data--such as credit card numbers, names and addresses--with
business partners in order to complete transactions as long as the
business partners agreed not to collect the user data themselves,
Ms. Scott said.

RANDOM AUDITS

Participating sites will also be subjected to random
audits.

At launch, about 50 companies are participating in the
program, including Excite, Four11 and America Online. Nine have
signed on as "premier partner" sponsors, contributing $100,000
each, including AT&T Corp. and Netscape Communications Corp.
Some, however, question the organization's category
definitions.

John Nardone, managing director of Modem Media, New
York, said he understood the "no exchange" label to mean sites
could not employ cookies to collect data from users' clickstream
behavior, such as observing what pages in the site they visit, even if
no personal data about the visitor are known.

Ms. Scott said such anonymous cookies would indeed be
acceptable under the "no exchange" label, "as long as no personal
information, such as the user's name, was collected." She added eTRUST
was currently updating its definitions.